PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF DESIRE post screening Q&A’s:
Saturday Dec 1st: 4:10pm (director Hao Wu & Adrian Chen, staff writer at The New Yorker) and 7:00pm (director with a panel of Chinese online influencers).
by Lamb L.
PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF DESIRE post screening Q&A’s:
Saturday Dec 1st: 4:10pm (director Hao Wu & Adrian Chen, staff writer at The New Yorker) and 7:00pm (director with a panel of Chinese online influencers).
by Lamb L.
From the New Yorker today, November 27, 2018, by Richard Brody: From the title alone, it’s obvious that “Bathtubs Over Broadway,” a new documentary by Dava Whisenant that opens this Friday, will be a delight. Its subject is the industrial musical—plays produced by corporations for their employees to enjoy at nationwide or regional sales meetings and conventions. Steve Young, who was, for more than twenty years, a writer for David Letterman, became obsessed, in the mid-nineties, with these shows—in particular, with LPs of them, which were pressed solely to be distributed to employees as souvenirs. The ostensible subject of “Bathtubs Over Broadway” is the amusement value of these exotic, eccentric by-products of show business, whose kitschy pleasures include celebrations of automobiles, dog food, and disposable blood-absorbing liners for the operating room, in a number that rhymes “hysterectomy” and “appendectomy.” But the overarching and underlying question that the film poses is nothing less than: What is art? And, for that matter, is the conventional definition of good art too narrow to account for the merits of such works as these?
Young admits that he was initially attracted to these records because he found them “unintentionally hilarious.” (This is the quality that led him to work the musicals into bits on the Letterman Show, for the recurring segment “Dave’s Record Collection.”) But, as he devoted himself to collecting the albums more intensively and combed archives and personal collections for memorabilia, whether sheet music or handbills, photographs or reels of film, Young discovered that, alongside the intrinsic element of absurdity and incongruity, there’s often a sincere and authentic spark of creative imagination and ingenuity.
He noted that some of these shows employed major artists (or ones who’d later become famous), both behind the scenes and onstage, including the composers Sheldon Harnick (better known for “Fiddler on the Roof”) and the team of John Kander and Fred Ebb (“Cabaret”); such actors as Chita Rivera, Florence Henderson, Bob Newhart, and Martin Short; and directors including Bob Fosse and Susan Stroman. Young also became fascinated by other performers and composers whose prominence in industrial musicals wasn’t matched by success in public theatre, and he sought to learn more about their art and their lives.
“Bathtubs Over Broadway” chronicles Young’s own story, as a writer early in his career who had no hobbies and instead found an obsession—and whose increasing involvement with industrial musicals coincided with David Letterman’s retirement and Young’s own withdrawal from comedy writing. (Fascinatingly, Young describes himself as “comedy-damaged,” explaining that decades of immersion in comedy have left him evaluating the craft rather than responding to it, and his sideline in industrial musicals appears to restore him to a state of unjaded passion.) Yet the central enticement of the documentary comes from the records and films of the musicals themselves. “Bathtubs Over Broadway” springs to life above all when Young puts an LP on his turntable, when he’s in a Library of Congress viewing room and sees a private 16-mm. copy of a production, or when digitized copies of soundtracks and films are excerpted directly into the film. The movie includes clips from the disco-style Johnson & Johnson “sunscreen musical of 1978,” a musical number called “Xerox Spoken Here,” the sheet music for an instrumental number called “Seagram’s Symphony,” and a scene of a kick-line chorus singing a financial ditty about “the extra margins that accrue.”
by Lamb L.
by Lamb L.
SONG OF BACK AND NECK filmmaker Paul Lieberstein will participate in a Q&A moderated by Rainn Wilson after the 7:40 pm show on Friday, 11/30.
by Lamb L.
RSVP ON EVENTBRITE
This is a Free Event
LAEMMLE LIVE proudly presents the extraordinary Crossroads School Jazz “A” Band on Sunday, December 2, 2018 performing classic, contemporary and original jazz.
Crossroads School for Arts & Sciences is a K-12, coed college preparatory school in Santa Monica, California. Crossroads was founded upon five basic commitments: to academic excellence; to the arts; to the greater community; to the development of a student population of social, economic and racial diversity; and to the development of each student’s physical well-being and full human potential. One in four students receives financial assistance. The School is highly acclaimed for its programs and is a leader in public/private educational partnerships.
The program will be selected from the following: Inner Space, by Chick Corea, Drum Battle, by Kneedbody, Ridges, by Leo Major, My Foolish Heart, by Washington/Young, Have You Met Miss Jones, by Richard Rodgers, Red Clay, by Freddie Hubbard, Someday My Prince Will Come, by Churchill/Morey, In a Sentimental Mood, by Duke Ellington, 500 Miles High, by Chick Corea, Head in the Clouds, by Lucas Wurman, Isfahan, by Strayhorn/Ellington, Nardis, by Miles Davis, Capricornus, by Austin Peralta, Time After Time, by Cahn/Styne, Footprints, by Wayne Shorter.
Crossroads Jazz “A” Band
Leo Major, alto saxophone
Ethan Avery, trumpet
Will Kissinger, piano
Josh Lipp, guitar
Lucas Wurman, guitar/vocals
Will Royce, bass
Emilio Anamos, drums
Stefan Fayman, drums
This is a Free Event
RSVP ON EVENTBRITE
Sunday, December 2, 2018
11:00 AM
Monica Film Center
by Lamb L.
THE LONG DUMB ROAD Q&A to follow the 7:30 pm show at the Monica Film Center on Friday, 11/16 and after the 7:15 pm show on Saturday, 11/17 at the Glendale.
Monica Film Center:
Moderated by: Casey Wilson
Attending: Hannah Fidell (director) and Tony Revolori (cast)
Glendale:
Moderated by: Michaela Watkins
Attending: Hannah Fidell (director), Taissa Farmiga (cast) and Grace Gummer (cast)
by Lamb L.
TRUST MACHINE Q&A following the 7:30 PM show on Friday, 11/16, 3:10 PM shows on Saturday, 11/17 and Sunday, 11/18 at the Monica Film Center.
Q&A participants are:
Alex Winter, Director
Geoff Clark and Kim Jackson, Producers
Michalakis Spyridon, Quantum Physicist Professor, Caltech University
Mark Jeffrey, CEO & Co-Founder at Guardian Circle
Tor Ekeland, Lawyer Lauri Love
Moderated by Jeremy Kay.
by Lamb L.
HORN FROM THE HEART: THE PAUL BUTTERFIELD STORY Q&A’s after the 7:30 PM shows 11/2 – 11/4 at the Playhouse, and following the 7:30 PM shows at the Noho 7 on Monday, 11/5 and at the Monica Film Center on Tuesday, 11/6.
Playhouse:
11/2 Director John Anderson
11/3 Musician Steve Madaio and director John Anderson
11/4 Director John Anderson
NoHo 7:
11/5 Musician Jim Kweskin, Kathy Butterfield and director John Anderson
Monica Film Center:
11/6 Director John Anderson